Featuring the select works by Monmouth University students in Photography, Graphic Design, Animation and Studio Art.
-
Annual Student Exhibition
-
FILM SCREENING & FACULTY LED DISCUSSION: REBIRTH OF A NATION BY PAUL D. MILLER AKA DJ SPOOKY
To create his film Rebirth of a Nation, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, remixed D.W. Griffith’s 1915 epic film The Birth of a Nation. His re-telling of this overtly racist story depicted in the Reconstruction-era United States hurtles Griffith’s images into the 21st century. The original film was based on a novel and theater play by Thomas Dixon entitled. By applying DJ technique to cinema, Miller’s new film parallels, deconstructs and remixes the original. He likes to think of it as “film as found object” in the same sense that artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol and David Hammons, among many others, have fostered creative investigations into the idea of found objects, cinema and “appropriation art.”
The event will feature a discussion led by Monmouth faculty from a variety of disciplines. Including: Johanna Foster (Sociology), Walter Greason (History), Mark Ludak (Photography) and Brook Nappi (Anthropology). The first half of the film will screen starting at 4:30 p.m. Faculty will lead a discussion in the middle of the event, and the second half of the film will follow until 6:45 p.m.
Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is an established composer, multimedia artist, and author. He travels around the world performing solo, with chamber groups, and with orchestras, while giving talks at prominent universities, museums, and conferences. His DJ Mixer app has seen more than 12 million downloads and in 2012- 2013 he was the first artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. He is also the executive editor of ORIGIN Magazine. He’s produced and composed work for Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, and scores of artists and award-winning films. Miller’s work as a media artist has appeared in the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; and many other museums and galleries. He has been featured everywhere from CNN to SyFy. His new book The Imaginary App, published by MIT Press, was released in 2014. National Geographic named Miller a National Geographic Emerging Explorer for 2014/2015.
NOTE: Miller will not be present for this event.
-
Artist Talk with Chris Clavio
Chris Clavio is an Electronic Artist and Entrepreneur living and working in Santa Fe, NM. His work explores the sublime and perception using light, sound, and interactive environments. Currently he is the Director of IT and Electrical Infrastructure Systems for the artist collective Meow Wolf.
Clavio has shown work across the United States, most recently in Pittsburgh, PA, with Energy Flow, a project in collaboration with Andrea Polli that highlights the Rachel Carson bridge with wind-turbine powered LEDs. His current projects integrate several software platforms and various hardware configurations to create immersive and interactive environments that stimulate the senses in order to evoke the imagination and push the limits of our perceived reality.
More info: www.clavionline.com
-
Reduced Shakespeare Company’s All the Great Books (abridged)
Little Dickens. Short Longfellow. Reduced Proust… All the Great Books. As anyone named Cliff will tell you, Less is More. The Literary Canon explodes as the bad boys of abridgement again unleash comic outrage on an unsuspecting public. America’s best loved comedy troupe takes you on a 98 minute roller- coaster ride through its compact compendium of 89 of the world’s great books in All The Great Books (abridged). It’s 1.1 books per minute (on average). Confused by Confucius? Thrown by Thoreau? Wish Swift was faster? Aiming for an ace of Tennyson? Then hop aboard and buckle up as the three cultural guerrillas of the Reduced Shakespeare Company zip through everything you should have read in school but probably didn’t. It’s a blast of bibliography. You’ve seen their PBS special. You’ve heard them on National Public Radio. They are officially London’s longest-running comedy troupe, and have broken box-office records at the Kennedy Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and the Pittsburgh Public Theatre. What are you waiting for? Tempus fugit! Reductio ad absurdum.
In the spirit of Shakespeare himself, RSC shows contain some occasional bawdy language and mild innuendo. All children (and parents) are different, so we’ve chosen to rate our shows PG- 13: Pretty Good If You’re Thirteen.
What the Critics Say…
“Inspired lunatics! Funny, funny show… Brilliant!”
~ The Charlotte Observer
“Raucously funny! Inspired, crazed ridiculousness!” ~ The Buffalo News
“Literature’s greatest hits condensed into a 90-minute roller-coaster ride of hilarity.” ~ The Atlanta Journal Constitution
“Verbally dexterous and physically agile. The show darts from satire to silliness to sophisticated irreverence.” ~ The Boston Globe
“…come see how three accomplished performers can turn your literary ignorance into a polished evening’s entertainment.” ~ The Seattle Times
“Intertextuality can rarely have felt so frantic or so funny.” ~ The Scotsman, Edinburgh
Website: www.reducedshakespeare.com
-
Artist Talk with Weili Shi
Weili Shi is an artist who designs through the media of digital technologies. He creates unconventional experiences with the aim of provoking people’s consciousness. In his most recent work, Shan Shui in the World, he transformed the information of the buildings in Manhattan, NY, into traditional Chinese shan shui (landscape) paintings by a custom algorithm. This project revisits the ideas implicit in Chinese literati paintings of shan shui: the relationship between urban life and people’s yearning for nature, and between social responsibility and spiritual purity. With generative technology, Shan Shui in the World has the ability to represent any place in the world—including the city where the audience is—in the form of a shan shui painting. Weili Shi is currently a developer at Bluecadet and teaches at Parsons School of Design.
More info: shi-weili.com
-
The Three Pigettes and The Big Bad Lady Wolf/Las Tres Cerditas y La Loba Feroz
Presented by Teatro SEA, the premiere Bilingual Arts-in-Education Organization and Latino Children’s Theatre in the United States, Mama Piggy narrates this bilingual adaptation that features a vegetarian wolf and the three cutest little pigs on this side of town. Action, adventure and not to mention Salsa, as well as other Latin music keep audiences clapping en route to a happy ending. Recommended for Pre-K to 5th Grade.
Mamá Piggy narra esta adaptación bilingüe que cuenta con el protagonismo de una loba vegetariana y las tres cerditas más lindas de este lado de la ciudad. Acción, aventura y música salsa, así como otros ritmos latinos, harán mantener al público aplaudiendo hasta un final feliz. Recomendada para estudiantes de Pre-K hasta 5to grado. Funciones bilingües.
More info: http://teatrosea.org/
-
Alicia Ostriker
Alicia Ostriker is a poet and critic, author of seventeen collections of poetry, most recently The Book of Seventy (winner of the National Jewish book Award), The Old Woman, the Tulip and the Dog, and Waiting for the Light. She has received the Paterson Poetry Prize, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and has been twice nominated for the National Book Award, among other honors. As a critic she is the author of Stealing the Language; the Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America, and other books on poetry and on the Bible. She is distinguished Professor Emerita of Rutgers University, teaches in the low-residency Poetry MFA program at Drew university, and is currently a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. This event is part of the Jewish Cultural Studies Program.
-
Alena Graedon
Alena Graedon’s first novel, The Word Exchange, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Paperback Row pick, and selected as a best novel of 2014 by Kirkus. It has been translated into eight languages. She has twice been a MacDowell Colony Fellow
(2012 and 2017), and has also received fellowships at Yaddo, Ucross, The Virginia Center for the Arts, The Vermont Studio Center, and Jentel. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times Book Review, newyorker.com, The Believer magazine, Guernica, and Post Road among other publications. A native of Durham, NC, Graedon is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University’s MFA program, and she is an Assistant Professor of English at Monmouth University. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. -
L.A. Theatre Work’s The Mountaintop
On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated outside room 306 of The Lorraine Motel in Memphis. What happened inside room 306 the night before the killing is a mystery. In her internationally acclaimed play, The Mountaintop, playwright Katori Hall fantasizes what may have transpired in the overnight hours between the legendary civil rights leader and a seemingly inconsequential hotel maid.
Winner of the prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Play, The Mountaintop is rife with humor and political jabs, while giving us a glimpse at the human side of Martin Luther King Jr. Hours after his famed final speech, punctuated by the immortal line, “I’ve been to the mountaintop,” the celebrated Reverend reveals his hopes, regrets, and fears, creating a masterful bridge between mortality and immortality. In 2018, America and the world marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr., yet, struggles to resolve racial tension remain a challenge for communities everywhere.
The Mountaintop premiered in London in 2009 and subsequently ran on Broadway starring Angela Bassett and Samuel L. Jackson.
The Mountaintop contains some mature language.
“It is a relationship that is breathtaking, hilarious, and heart-stopping in its exchanges, and in its speedy ability to reveal character and pull the audience into the ring.”
– The Independent, London
**************
Under the leadership of Producing Director, Susan Albert Loewenberg, L.A. Theatre Works (LATW) has been the foremost radio theater company in the United States for four decades. L.A. Theatre Works is broadcast weekly in America on public radio stations, daily in China on the Radio Beijing Network, streamed online at www.latw.org and programs are aired internationally on the BBC, CBC, and many other English language networks. LATW has single-handedly brought the finest recorded dramatic literature into the homes of millions. On the road, LATW has delighted audiences with its unique live radio theater style performances in over 300 small towns and major cities, including New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington and Chicago, Beijing and Shanghai. An L.A. Theatre Works performance is immediate, spontaneous, and features a first-rate cast, live sound effects, and a connection to the audience rarely felt in a traditional theater setting. This theater… is an event.
More information: www.latw.org
-
Wailin’ Jennys
The Wailin Jennys are Nicky Mehta, Ruth Moody and Heather Masse three distinct voices that together make an achingly perfect vocal sound.
Starting as a happy accident of solo singer/songwriters getting together for a one-time-only performance at a tiny guitar shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, The Wailin’ Jennys have grown over the years into one of today’s most beloved international folk acts. Founding members Moody and Mehta along with New York-based Masse continue to create some of the most exciting music on the folk-roots scene, stepping up their musical game with each critically lauded recording and thrilling audiences with their renowned live performances.
In 2004, The Wailin’ Jennys released their first full-length album 40 Days to great critical acclaim, netting a 2005 Juno Award (Canadian Grammy) for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year. Bolstered by their frequent appearances on Garrison Keillor’s public radio show A Prairie Home Companion, The Jennys exploded onto the roots music scene, performing at packed venues across the Canada, the U.S. and throughout the world.
The Jennys’ sophomore album, 2006’s Firecracker, served as a powerful follow-up to their career-making debut. Artistically, the record found The Jennys stepping out of the folk realm and into the world of alt-country, pop and rock. Garnering much attention, it was nominated for a Juno Award and won a 2007 Folk Alliance Award for Contemporary Release of the Year. Firecracker had legs, spending over 56 weeks on the Billboard charts.
The trio’s 2009 release, Live at Mauch Chunk Opera House, also spent over a year on the Billboard bluegrass charts. That landmark live album bottled the lightning of The Jennys’ live performances with show-stopping harmonies, impressive instrumental prowess, breathtaking songs and, of course, witty stage banter.
For their latest album, 2011’s Juno-winning Bright Morning Stars, The Wailin’ Jennys joined the ranks of Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris and recorded with award-winning producer Mark Howard. Co-produced by frequent Jennys collaborator and Juno Award-nominated David Travers-Smith, the album combines fresh and innovative sounds with the band’s signature harmonies — a perfect mix of Americana, pop and traditional folk that is destined to be a modern classic.
Although known primarily as an acoustic outfit, The Wailin’ Jennys have a diverse musical background that has shaped their musical sensibilities. Soprano Ruth Moody (vocals, guitar, accordion, banjo, bodhrán) is a classically trained vocalist and pianist with a burgeoning solo career. She made a splash in 2010 with the Juno-nominated The Garden which was followed up with 2013’s gorgeous These Wilder Things. She’s an accomplished, versatile singer of traditional and Celtic music and as the former lead singer of Juno-nominated roots band Scruj MacDuhk. Mezzo Nicky Mehta (vocals, guitar, harmonica, drums, ukulele), a classically trained dancer raised on ’70s a.m. radio and heavily influenced by alternative pop, was nominated for a Canadian Indie Music Award for her striking debut solo album, 2002’s Weather Vane. In July 2009 she became the proud mother to twin boys, Beck and Finn. Alto Heather Masse (vocals, upright bass) is a Jazz Voice graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, who has performed in Mark O’Connor’s Hot Swing, Darol Anger’s Republic of Strings and is a regular guest on A Prairie Home Companion. She has also toured with her own band, supporting her 2009 Red House release Bird Song. Her latest, 2013’s Lock My Heart, is an inspired album of jazz standards and originals with legendary pianist Dick Hyman.
With their varying backgrounds, each of the Jennys is unique in their individual expression. Together they forge a unified folk-pop sound — all delivered with the irresistible vocal power of three.
”…perhaps more beautiful than ever. The Wailin’ Jennys are the darlings of the North American roots music arena.” Greg Quill, The Toronto Star
“Like three little birds singing softly
and sweetly in the early morn, the harmony of the Wailin’ Jennys
pleasantly rises from the speakers and greets the listener with a
refreshing start to the day.” David McPherson, Exclaim!Website: http://www.thewailinjennys.com/